When will the submissions be evaluated? I had a ton of fun preparing for this contest, and as time goes on I feel more and more that I put in more work than warranted for this contest. Next year, I would love to participate again but I am a little discouraged at the apparent lack of commitment from the GameDev staff on this contest. I still greatly appreciate the opportunity, though. I just wish there was more apparent effort on part of GameDev.

I'm sure they'll be judged soon enough. Then again, it's never soon enough for the participants. As much as people complained about the elements and contest, I'd not be in a rush to judge either.

I have mixed feelings about the contest but I love the random elements and free form. I never have time but I've wanted to enter every year since Ninjas/Pirates/Robots/Aliens. That was the best year for high-tech, varied, complete entries. Then again, it had a theme everyone could appreciate and a great set of prizes as incentive.

The elements should never really matter. Any creative person should be able to adapt them to their needs. This year, I wanted to do a dark, comical game inspired by Rainbow Brite. Last year, I wanted to make a game inspired by Gem and the Holograms, with metal and rock, set in Europe, fighting the evils of economy eating, American Idols and country music. Comedy and imagination are so underrated in games. Every cartoon and movie from the 80s and 90s works as amazing fuel for thought.

People go overboard with their lofty ideas for such a short term project. Still, it is a little unbalanced that 2D flash and Game Maker artists can pummel programmers who can make the tech but not the content. Fewer programmers will enter, leaving pretty, complete, but low-tech submissions.

Since animators and artists don't waste time with likely to fail projects, I've considered paying for content that goes beyond my ability or schedule. To invest that seriously, I'd have to either have alterior motives or a decent ROI.

Sure, legal, freeware, shareware, or fully licensed software is obviously required for development. Why would anyone (like nVidia, AMD, Intel, Adobe, Autodesk, etc) sponsor a competition whose entries didn't reflect the potential of their products? Make bigger, better games and get bigger, better prizes. (I'd buy that for a dollar!)

For future contests, I'd recommend the following:
-Extend the contest to a full year, or 6 months, and have them back to back.
-Announce new elements the day the previous contest ends.
-Announce and commit to submission dates up front.
-Announce and commit to judging dates up front.
-Announce base prizes up front.
-Set a higher bar for minimum game requirements to balance entries.

[Edited by - BeastX on April 29, 2008 1:10:02 PM]

Quote:Original post by BeastX
For future contests, I'd recommend the following:
-Extend the contest to a full year, or 6 months, and have them back to back.
-Announce new elements the day the previous contest ends.
-Announce and commit to submission dates up front.
-Announce and commit to judging dates up front.
-Announce base prizes up front.
-Set a higher bar for minimum game requirements to balance entries.

I definitely agree with an extension and committing to dates, but there are reasons that it's not like that. The mods on the site aren't full time gamedev moderators, so they can't really commit to certain dates because they probably have jobs or school. The same goes for most of the entrants. As for the extension, it's nice but I kind of think that people may lose interest after a year. You are right, and I think that the contest would be more popular, and more widely known if people could make these commitments. Of course there are things that could be done to make the contest better, and I think that they should work on that, but after all, I don't think they get paid much, if at all to run this contest.

On another note, I think the contest was pretty cool. I only wish I had finished.

The elements do matter and the elements this time around were just lame. It is clear by the lack of enthusiasm this time around, that the elements matter.

I personally felt that the OPs slack interpretation of "pony" was against the spirit of the competition. If it is allowed in future competitions, anyone can completely ignore any elements by naming things by the elements..

The graphics look fine, but the pony element was not what I would call a "significant presence". You could replace the equine theme with canine theme and it's still the same thing at the end of the day. But in any case, at least you made something so credit should be given for that.

Quote:Original post by BeastX
-Set a higher bar for minimum game requirements to balance entries.

I can't see it making it better if everyone has access to SM3.0 or whatever. Amazing games have been written before SM1.0 came around (like Quake 3, StarCraft, blah blah etc) and everything after that is just pretty effects.
I think any game which requires fancy effects to make it seem good, is probably not a very good game but just a pretty engine with minimal game play. I'd MUCH rather see a full-featured game using the Quake 1 engine than a few animated models bumbling around in the Doom III engine.